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Try and try again!

I have not been totally absent in the world of cooking and baking. Robert Kennedy said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”

Let me tell you, I have been doing great things in the kitchen! I have been failing greatly! Let me fill you in a bit.

Daughter number three likes to look up recipes on Pinterest and then say, “Oh, mom. I saw this great thing that we should try.” Or even once, “Oh, mom, I saw this great thing and I told my Calc class I would bring them in.” I knew I hated Calculus…

That got us to thinking about other kinds of Puppy Chow we could make. We have made the original, and I made some Nutella Puppy Chow a while ago. Fabulous results. So, we decided to make S’mores Puppy Chow. Boy, did we think we had a plan. We used Graham Cracker Cereal and Rice Chex as our “base”. Then, we followed the method for making Krispy Treats, and melted butter and miniature marshmallows together, added some chocolate chips and coated the cereal. It was a thick and gooey mess. Not a success. In fact, it was such a colossal mess that the Hubs didn’t even eat it!

Her next big creation idea was for a science class that she isn’t even in. She is a teacher’s aide for Chemistry. On Mole Day (10.23) she ‘had’ to take treats that somehow incorporated “moles”. Dirt cake seemed an obvious answer, but she said it is over done. So we thought about doing something “cara-mole”. We were really leaning that way when she found a recipe on (duh duh duh (mystery music)) Pinterst for Marshmallow frosting. Marsh-MOLE-o frosting…It’s really just a cooked egg white frosting. I baked 4 dozen chocolate cupcakes for the frosting to go on. She was away at some extra curricular activity. By the time she got home the cupcakes were ready to frost and my egg whites were room temperature. I set up the saucepan of water and got the bowl out to set on top. I did tell her that she would be the one doing the whisking. She didn’t even complain. The recipe said that it would take under 10 minutes…well, it took more than 30 and our frosting still didn’t reach meringue fluffiness! I piped the thin frosting onto the cupcakes. I did hear, than in spite of how thin the frosting was, and how completely unlike marshmallow fluff, it tasted great… https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4TSNP_enUS499US499

The last thing Daughter Number Three came home and said we just “had” to make, I choose to take some shortcuts that I normally don’t take. She had found this amazing recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookie S’mores. I found a very much simplified version that we made. I found it on the Betty Crocker website.

1 pouch (1 lb 1.5 oz) Betty Crocker® sugar cookie mix

1 cup graham cracker crumbs

1 cup butter or margarine, melted

3 cups milk chocolate chips (18 oz)

4 1/2 cups miniature marshmallows

Preheat oven to 375°F. In large bowl, stir together cookie mix and crumbs. Stir in melted butter until soft dough forms. Press into ungreased 13×9-inch pan.

We found that we needed to let the bars cool completely before cutting them. She took them in a tightly covered container to school, where she did not serve them warm. They were, however, a huge success. Not to mention, this recipe saved me a great deal of time (and energy). Oh, and this one was a failure. Just a compromise.

Now, I just need to get back into full swing and start making things that are successful time and again! Ooooh, and since it’s fall I have plenty of reasons and wonderful weather to use as my reason. I’m ready. Are you?